Del Toro will give LOTR fans a new Hobbit, but will Ron Perlman be the voice of Smaug? beorn the Bear-man?

“We were frankly amazed the footage was so well received.Jackson admitted he and his fellow filmmakers felt an enormous amount of pressure making LOTR because the studio, New Line, was in precarious financial shape and betting nearly $300 million on his movies ”

“The Lovely Bones” would seem to be an examination of how much more powerful/all seeing the Susie character might or might not be after death. Omniscience is a Jackson theme. Does Susie see that someone else’s number is up? That “The Lovely Bones” is a cathartic reworking of “the Frighteners” can’t only have occurred to me. The resonances are too strong.

Experiencing both sides of the equation is a Gandalf role. “King Kong”’s Anne must experience both the knowledge of Kong’s beauty, worth and the emotional connection to him, while knowing his freakish monstrosity must be extinguished for safety. Despite his charm and intelligence, he will fall under the onslaught of the inevitable human inhumanity to the animal world. It’s the horrible knowledge that Kong is beautiful but must and will die that brings the movie close to us.

On the theme of being more powerful after death, we move to the Obi-Wan Kenobi maelstrom of character development. Michael J. Fox is more powerful after death. Ann is more powerful after her ceremonial “death” offering to Kong. Indeed, the death of her character as it was powerfully occurs during the events on the island. Her attempt at the end of the film to demur to an ‘off-Broadway” existence is simply a mask.